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Thursday, April 25, 2024
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Wealth of Geeks Helps Film Lovers Size Up Spring Cinema

Wealth of Geeks, an information hub for financial, tech and lifestyle guides and reviews, is giving film lovers the lowdown on the newest releases in theatres this spring. Their recent article by Richard Chachowski highlights the most anticipated films of the season along with current showings leaving theatres soon and popular re-releases to look out for.  

 

The article serves as a user-friendly manual, offering a succinct overview of each movie, accompanied by a brief evaluation and insights into its critical reception. Additionally, it includes Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb ratings, allowing readers to make well-informed choices and schedule their upcoming cinema outings.

 

If there’s a theme that dominates their list of new releases, it’s action. First on their list is Shazam! Fury of the Gods, the latest offering from DCEU starring Zachary Levi and Asher Angel. Fans of Marvel can then get a rundown of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania starring Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly.  

 

The article also features 65, a new sci-fi film starring Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt that Chachowski calls “equal parts Planet of the Apes as it is Jurassic Park” and states that the film “punctuates its exciting action with some added horror elements.” Scream VI, the new release from the Scream franchise, is also featured in the article and offers spring theatre-goers another horror-action option. 

 

Other films included in the new release section of the Wealth of Geeks article include the comedy-horror Cocaine Bear, the new dramatic comedy Moving On starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda along with two sports films, Creed III and Champions. The psychosocial thriller Inside starring William Dafoe also made the list. 

 

Subsequently, the article alerts readers about movies that are expected to depart from theatres shortly. This roster encompasses a diverse array of film genres, spanning from action-comedy to horror to biographical drama.

 

First on their list of notable movies is Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, the latest action comedy from Guy Ritchie starring Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett and Hugh Grant. Magic Mike’s Last Dance starring Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek is also featured along with Jesus Revolution starring Kelsey Grammer and Jonathan Roumie, both films drawing lukewarm reviews from critics. 

 

Other notable films on the list include M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, a mystery-horror that Chachowski calls “one of Shyamalan’s better films in the grand scheme of his career.” Also featured is the sports comedy 80 for Brady starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno, and the British biographical drama Emily, which offers a portrait of writer Emily Bronte. 

 

Check out the full article on Wealth of Geeks to see which films are heating up in theatres and which ones are soon making their departure. 

 

New York City’s Most Iconic Film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Was Actually Written by Greenwich Village’s Willa Cather, Not the Limelight-Driven Truman Capote Who Stole It

Shiloh Richter, Writer and Editor, Books of the Southwest Literary Journal Since 1957, recently revealed the evidence for a forthcoming book that Truman Capote didn’t write Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Author Willa Cather did. Truman Capote stole it, and Audrey Hepburn knew it, and set out to do something absolutely marvelous about it. It’s the “Historical, Numinous, Magical, Hilarious, Literary Beginnings of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
  • Using extensive literary research of Willa Cather’s works, analysis of Truman’s novella, taken with the differences of Breakfast at Tiffany’s screenwriter George Axelrod’s drafts, the evidence is clear that Truman Capote plagiarized his entire novella. Axelrod set out to bring it back to Willa. He couldn’t take the route of making Willa’s work into a movie because she had prohibited it in her estate when she passed in 1947. He needed a female’s magic.
  • Producer Marty Jurow and George Axelrod used Truman’s wrong to talk Audrey Hepburn into taking the role at the moment when, pregnant with her first child, what she wanted most was a home life with her husband and soon-to-arrive baby, with this meeting also written about by author Sam Wasson in Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. 
  • Willa Cather had a much larger vision for culture than Truman’s quest for the spotlight. It was deeply rooted in how she understood that the female inspires all of culture (as opposed to patriarchy). Willa, as the immigrants she knew (like the real Anna Pavelka in Nebraska who inspired My Ántonia), when first grounded in heritage, arts, culture, and music, and given the freedom of her own spirit, would not be a victim to patriarchy and its systems, but its actual, embodied religious inspiration. That was the spirit she captured of the female in New York City that is the actual Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She knew how it transformed the culture itself-especially for us now at this moment as systems tumble.
  • Many of the details of Breakfast at Tiffany’s comes from Willa’s story “Coming, Aphrodite!” (1920) set around Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village: moving into the same apartment building, the dog Truman would turn into a cat, the rooftop turned into the fire escape, the title, and Audrey’s iconic opening scene (which is not in Truman’s text, but returned in Axelrod’s).
  • Willa wrote it when she lived at 5 Bank St. in West Village
  • One of her addresses, 60 Washington Square South, overlooking Washington Square Park, inspired details of the story and is now the heart of NYU.
  • The beginning basis of Holly Golightly comes from Willa’s story “The Bohemian Girl” published in McClure’s Magazine in August 1912, setting up NYC for its most iconic female story ever.
  • Shiloh Richter is the author of Coyote Weaves a Song: A Mythological Song from the Beginning of Time and My Love Affair with Moonbeam.

Skint Film Company’s £7k Movie Among Best New Films to Stream in 2023: A Rags to Riches Success Story

The bootstrapped UK film studios’ £7,000 production, Lottery, is now available to over 80 million streaming users worldwide on Plex and Tubi. It’s four-out-of-five UK Film Review accolade makes it one of the most successful new films to stream in the UK this year. Success has put the Skint Film Company on the map as a fully self-sufficient UK independent movie studio, with a second feature film, Talking to Ghosts, lined up for release in summer 2023.
Described as “Beautiful and dramatic” by the UK Film Review, Lottery is the brainchild of one of the most exciting upcoming British filmmakers, Ryan J. Smith, a previous festival darling and now maverick producer. Financed solely by Smith himself and produced on a bootstrap budget of just £7,000, the film has landed on Plex and Tubi, where it is available to upwards of 80 million streamers worldwide, with more platforms and even more exposure to follow soon.
Following the success of Lottery, the Skint Film Company will be releasing its second full-length feature film, Talking to Ghosts, this summer. Further feature releases are also in the pipeline for 2024 and beyond.
Its efforts in bringing compelling drama to the streaming space on a shoestring budget are disrupting the prevailing movie paradigm that big bucks funding is needed to create and shoot high-quality films. The Skint Film Company is now firmly on the map as one of the UK’s fully-armed and operational independent movie studios to watch for the future.
Commenting on the success of the Skint Film Company so far, founder, producer and director Smith says, “I’m excited to have a full slate of feature film projects with international releases for this year and beyond.  I’m proud to say they’re all homegrown and made precisely how I wanted to make them.”
“Hopefully my movies send a message to young and emerging filmmakers that you don’t have to wait to be rescued. Never fall prey to other people’s laziness. If you have a movie to make, make it. It’s as simple as that. The rest falls into place naturally.”
A tense thriller, Lottery tells the story of a young man navigating love and loss in the aftermath of a lottery win. Pro Moviemaker magazine hails the movie as being “every bit as atmospheric as a film with an army of technicians.”
Alongside glowing reviews, leading man Mitchell Fisher, who plays lottery-winner Lee, has been awarded the Best Actor gong at the Maverick Film Awards for his interpretation of the role.
Lottery is available to stream for free in the UK on Plex now.
The Skint Film Company is MetFilm School graduate, Ryan J. Smith’s, rags-to-riches foray into the feature film space. One of the UK film production companies shaking up the streaming scene, Lancashire-born Smith has built Skint from nothing into a successful, self-sufficient studio turning out feature films, shorts, animated movies, and documentaries.
Its back catalogue includes the critically-acclaimed foray into the Amsterdam jazz scene, “Red Light Solo”, which won five Best Documentary Features awards, including an accolade from the London Film Awards in 2019.
Talking to Ghosts, will be released in the summer of 2023. For more information visit https://www.skintfilmcompany.com/.

‘How the 1970s shaped the Hollywood movie blockbuster’, according to Alpha1Media

By its Founder and Writer-Producer, Talal Malik, Global media and entertainment firm Alpha1Media launched the exclusive new industry opinion-editorial on ‘How the 1970s shaped the Hollywood blockbuster movie’, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of ‘The Godfather’ winning the Best Picture Oscar on March 27, 1973.
With eight out of the top 10 highest-grossing films at the global box office in 2022 being special effects-driven franchise sequels or superhero movies, the first Hollywood movie to dominate the box office as a blockbuster was actually ‘The Godfather’, writes Talal Malik in the exclusive op-ed on Alpha1Media.com.
“‘The Godfather’ was a drama film based on the relationships between people and the choices they make, made on a tight budget with a young director with no special effects, and yet became the first Hollywood blockbuster,” said Talal Malik at the launch of the op-ed.
“But if the truth be told, the Marvel, DC and Hollywood franchise films of today actually owe their box office dominance to the foundational performance of that film, and what it kickstarted, which also raises the question – and a challenge – of whether films like ‘The Godfather’ and influential successors can once again dominate the global box office.”
As a writer-producer with Alpha1Media, Talal Malik’s work and thought leadership has been recognised by some of the most influential people in the global film industry, and his latest article not only charts the lineage of the Hollywood blockbuster, but addresses the on-going controversy about franchise dominance at the box office and what can be done, as he terms, to achieve “a rebalancing.”
Alpha1Media Founder and Writer-Producer Talal Malik, as an official participant at the 75th Festival de Cannes, proposed that 2022 was to become the Year of Cinema’s Next Quantum Leap, and so published his exclusive milestone perspective on the future of global cinema on May 23, 2022, in prestigious British newspaper, ‘The Independent’(Premium Section), expanded exclusively on Alpha1Media.com as ‘Cinema’s Next Quantum Leap’, and also published in Arabic in Fortune Magazine (US) and also in Mandarin, while ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ had its Official Selection Screening in Cannes on May 18, 2022.
With the immediate subsequent worldwide release of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’  ,this became true, with Tom Cruise’s first film in his career to exceed $100 million at the domestic U.S. box office, and exceeding $1 billion at the global box office, becoming the No. 1 on the A1Film Top 10 Films 2022 and the A1Film Best Picture Winner 2022, while James Cameron’s ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ became 2022’s highest grossing film within less than a month of its release and into 2023, also winning the A1Film Best Director Winner 2022 and No. 2 on the A1Film Top 10 Films 2022.

Some of the most influential people in the Hollywood movie industry and global popular culture are cited and discussed in the article, including Albert Ruddy, Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Rober De Niro, Talia Shire, Sylvester Stallone, Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler, Carl Weathers, Muhammad Ali, Thayer David, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr., Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Nicholas Hammond, Frank D. Gilroy, Dan Gilroy, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Ilya Salkind, Christopher Reeve, James Cameron, Tom Cruise, Joseph Zito, Christopher Nolan, Tom Shone, Orson Welles, Mario Kassar, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Michael Jordan.

In addition in 2022, Alpha1Media Founder Talal Malik as a Writer-Producer was also an official participant at the Berlinale – The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival in Germany where the company’s blockbuster film project was featured on the use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on February 11, 2022 and was then featured as a key speaker on a panel discussion in Lausanne, Switzerland,  on ‘Financing movies with the help of A.I.’
Alpha1Media on January 4, 2023, launched the A1Film Preview 2023, its acclaimed annual list of the top most-anticipated films from around the world which cinema audiences can look forward to watching in 2023, with many great filmmakers and actors returning with films at critical points in their careers.
Alpha1Media on December 30, 2022, launched its A1Film Awards 2022, celebrating the best of cinema in 2022, based on the A1Film Top 10 Best Movies 2022, launched on December 28, 2022.
Alpha1Media (Media. ENHANCED) is a global media and entertainment firm. Alpha1Media produces and advises onmedia creation using 10×10 types of media including phone, print, TV, radio,  billboard, computer, cinema and futuristicmedia based on scale, motion and holograms.
In the film sector, Alpha1Media focuses on film development, production, financing and cultural advisory services. Itcurrently has six film projects in development with production value estimated at over USD $500 million.

® ‘The Godfather’, Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Change Embraced by The Abundance Film With New Name and Website

Bristol-based documentary production company, The Abundance Film, has recently altered their name and launched a new website. Now called See Through Stories, the group were formerly focused on making a single high-impact feature documentary for a private client. Now they’re actively looking to secure new commissions for producing purpose-led documentaries or TV series. Furthermore, they’ve rethought and evolved their mission, actively working toward environmental and social change through sustainable filmmaking.
See Through Stories produces high-end, specialist-factual feature documentaries and TV series in response to the current ecological crises. It’s their intention to bring a fresh, forward-thinking mindset to the making of films and digital content that explores human relationships with the rest of the natural world. Through their projects, they seek to ignite conversations about key environmental and social issues. Their mission is to inspire change through purpose-led storytelling.
The small team at See Through Stories has valuable industry expertise under their belt. Company Director Jon Clay brings over 25 years of experience in the natural history and environmental filmmaking sector. He’s made award-winning films for international audiences, worked on the BBC documentary TV series South Pacific, Tribe and Wonders of the Monsoon, and produced and directed the Netflix feature documentary Breaking Boundaries. He also produced David Attenborough’s speech to world leaders at COP26 in 2021. Producer Ana Taboada got her start in environmental filmmaking working alongside Jon on Breaking Boundaries and The Earthshot Prize. She went on to produce and direct The Peak. The team also includes a specialist impact researcher, reflecting the importance they place on  drafting impact strategies right at the start of a project’s development.
The team at See Through Stories recognise that there is a shift taking place in audiences’ appetite for impact-driven films and they’re taking big strides to deliver this type of content. Leaning into a theory of change, they have their sights set on two initiatives: they’re working to create films that empower audiences to question the status quo by calling out corrupting stories and assumptions; and they’re also shining a light on healthier perspectives that can inspire audiences to imagine better futures.
“Big attention-grabbing films and series have the potential to create ‘cultural moments’ that ignite national and global conversations about issues that really matter, and open up the space for a plethora of additional content and ideas.” – Jon Clay, Director
Shifting the cultural perspective of natural history is also an important focus for See Through Stories. They invite collaborations with a wide range of cultures, including marginalised and Indigenous communities  In doing so, they seek to freshen the genre and broaden the Western lens of how natural history is viewed on screen.
Bringing Sustainable Filmmaking Into Focus 
Reducing their carbon footprint and normalising environmentally responsible filmmaking is a priority for the Bristol-based production company. Through their sustainable practices, they’re imagining a better future for the film industry. Not only do they work to adopt sustainable and equitable practices, but they also make it a point to share what they’re doing with other filmmakers.
Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. The environmental organisation, Albert, published a case study about See Through Stories’ first film, Abundance: The Story of Us. Albert helps the TV and film production industry reduce its carbon footprint through the use of their bespoke carbon calculator and other online tools. Their two-part case study examines the green working standards See Through Stories is bringing to the film industry.
Taking their impact-driven philosophy a step further, See Through Stories are changing their articles of association and are now committed to putting profits into new films for social good instead of paying dividends to shareholders. They’re also focused on working with private philanthropists eager to fund high-impact projects that influence change.
Finally, See Through Stories stays committed to promoting a sustainable work culture. They dedicate Fridays to well-being and encourage their staff to get away from their screens and spend time outside. The team also has access to free mental healthcare services.
“Our weekly well-being days aren’t just an extended weekend, they’re essential time away from our screens – ideally spending time in nature – that makes space for creativity and clarity of thought, ensuring our work remains meaningful and fulfilling.” – Jon Clay, Director
Through its entertaining and impactful documentaries, See Through Stories is quickly establishing itself as a production company intent on inspiring change. And by staying at the forefront of sustainable film-making and purpose-led storytelling, they’re being the change their films inspire.